I am so excited for Wednesday night. I hope to see some of you there! We may not get all of this covered, but it is my plan to spend a little time on Prayer Strategy 1.
Getting Your PASSION Back When It Is Gone!
For those of you who are going to work with us through the blog: Go back and read Session 1. Do the exercises. Get your notebook out and write the anwers down to the questions I asked. Complete the Schedule prayer time, place and target sections.
SUGGESTION: DATE your entries in your journal. Yes, do it for your children and grandchildren so they know the dates, but more importantly do it for yourself. I have had so many answers to prayers and responses to the guidance and clarification I have asked for from the Lord. I have found myself surprised the answer came so quickly. I have wanted to go back and see when I first started petitioning Him for it. I found that I forgot to date some of my early entries.
If you have not started your journal and prayer time just yet: Do not get down on yourself, but do not put it off any longer. Get started TODAY! I made the mistake of feeling ill-equiped and uneducated (all of which I am BTW). I spent about 2-3 weeks reading “The War Room” first, then “Fervent”, then “The Battle Plan for Prayer”. I felt like I couldn’t start until I learned how to pray Scripture based prayers. Not true. Start Now! Jesus wants you to spend time in fellowship with him. He will listen to you. He will move on your behalf. He will communicate back to you. Be expectant!
I could spend a couple pages describing what passion is to you but in the most simplistic sense it is your”want to” or “your cutting edge.” Passion is what keeps you moving in the direction your best intentions want you to go …in Patricia’s words. She goes on to say …
when you can’t seem to respond to spiritual stimuli with the same optimism and obedience as you once did… What makes you think it is somehow God’s fault, or your fault, or someone else’s fault, but never the enemy’s fault? Why do you think it could only be attributable to your bad character? To a drop in hormone levels. Whatever you attribute your lost passion to. Maybe another less noticeable but equally probably reason is you’ve been a victim of satanic sabotage.
Satan is a full-time accuser. He does it “day and night,” the Bible says in Rev 12:10. Instead of convicting you for the purpose of restoration, as God’s Spirit does, he condemns you for the purpose of destroying and humiliating. (all pretty much word for word from Fervent) Refer to Romans 8:1. Condemnation always leads to guilt-laden discouragement, while conviction–though often painful in pointing out our wrongdoing–still somehow encourages and lifts us, giving us hope to rebuild on.
Satan attacks our passon and he often times wins and we never even know it’s him. We tell ourselves we don’t feel like it anymore. Maybe that’s it, but more likely if you will look deeper, the devil has worn you down until you no longer have the will to fight back. FIGHT BACK for the sake of what is important to you. Fight for the things and people you love.
Fight for..Your marriage…still tense and broken, your child…still rebelling against all sound logic, your money….still not enough, your health…still chronic or scary, your addictions…still defeating you way to often. If you’re sick and tired of fighting these specific battles and feeling so defeated you have chosen as the song from my last post said, “to close your eyes and act like everyone’s alright, when you know their not.” I am asking you to start your prayer life back by petitioning Him to give you your passion back!
One of the things I love about Patricia Shirer is her way of bringing scripture into the here and now. I know we are all pressed for time, but go read 2 Kings 6:1-7. It’s short, you can do it! Using your Bible and getting familiar with the books and the pages again is one of the things I am praying we all begin to develope a love for during our time together!
(For those of you who won’t go read it, the gist is this: Elisha was standing near one of his helpers, who was chopping down a tree at the banks of the Jordan River, working to gather the materials to build a larger meeting place. But the iron head of that man’s ax wiggled loose from its wooden handle and sailed into the water, and went straight to the bottom. The ax wasn’t even his! He had borrowed it and now broken and lost it. Patricia says “He lost his cutting edge!”)
#1 Despite the lost ax head, the presence of God is still near. Satan wants you to think your lack of passion is because God was either never there at all or he got disgusted with you and left. Just because you’re feeling at a loss for words and “want-to”— just because your “cutting edge” in prayer seems misplaced for now— does not mean that God isn’t close by you.
#2 The servant was doing something good when he lost his cutting edge. He was working hard, for a good cause even. Had he not been doing this good work he probably would have never lost his “cutting edge” to start with! So even when you are actively engaged in the Lord’s work you are not protected from losing your passion.
#3 (this one is my favorite! I’m giving it to you word for word from “fervent” The ax was borrowed. The presence of passion, faith and belief in our hearts is a gift. If you’ve ever cried out passionately to God in faith, fully believing that He is able to do more than you ask or think or imagine, it’s only because He first stirred up that passion within you. So instead of always feeling guilty– personally responsible–whenever your passion in prayer is weak or missing realize instead that it is God’s work both to give it and then to fan it into flame inside you. Which means you cannot manufacture it on your own. Your enemy, however–coy as he is– wants to burden you with blame for not having something that didn’t originate with you in the first place. WOW HOW AMAZING IS THAT WORD?? IT IS UP TO GOD TO STIR YOUR PASSION AND KEEP IT BURNING!! I DON’T KNOW ABOUT YOU BUT I SPEND ALOT OF TIME FEELING GUILTY FOR MY FAILURES IN THIS AREA! Since reading this I have spent alot of time in praise to His name that God has the responsibility for keeping me passionate! All I have to do is ask him!
#4 Only a work of God could retreive the ax head. It could have fallen anywhere, but it fell in the water and went straight to the bottom. No hope of retreival under the power of man. Devinely recovered! Only a miracle could get it back! NOTHING is too far gone that your God cannot resurrect it. Even your passion. So go to Him to get it back. Don’t try to regain it yourself.
I know! This was alot! Next comes our call to write out our prayer for renewed passion! I’ll post again in the next few days with specific scriptures to incorporate into those prayers. but first I find this next part very comforting too. When we talk about passion in prayer, Patricia said she didn’t want to leave the impression that the only prayer God hears is the kind that’s spoken at high volumes, with sweat and tears and shaking fists and extraordinary energy. Prayer can be silent and still seethe with passion. And on some days, at some times, prayer-for any of us–can start out as simply an obedient appointment, an act of discipline, showing up in that prayer closet because it’s the appointed time that we said we’d be there!!
Believe me I have had those days too! Days when I feel like I’m just going through the motion. It’s worth it. Every day I really want more, more, more! I often do not even need my alarm in the mornings. It is like God wakes me up. My first thought (well usually anyway) when I wake up is, “Good Morning Lord, thank you for desiring to spend time with me.” Let me make something really really clear, in case you do not know me, I AM REALLY NOT A MORNING PERSON! That I wake up with this desire to spend time with my Lord is pretty amazing. I have missed some mornings here and there, but not many. Even when I miss my mornings, I am hungry and ready to make up the time in the evenings.
CONFESSION: I’m a TV addict. It helps me disengage. Turn my mind off. Ignore the things that are not as I want them to be or wish they might be.
God is teaching me to desire the opposite. I want to engage. Turn my mind onto Him. Pray fervently for the things that I want and wish for.
Sorry again this is so long. There is alot of information and I can’t wait for you guys to get in and start your journals and your written prayers. I started to say don’t let me down! Get started now. Instead I say don’t let yourself down. Don’t let your family, your kids, your loved ones, your God down. Get started now! I promise the more time you spend in prayer and fellowship with your Heavenly Father, the more time you will want to spend. He will begin a transformation in you. Remember, I am praying for you every day!
Lord, I ask that You forgive me for the times when I haven’t valued or believed in the power of prayer that You’ve offered to me. I’ve tried making things happen in other ways. But that hasn’t often proved so effective. Father, I want to learn to pray in faith. I want to grow closer to You. I want to experience this kind of confidence and freedom to believe you, rely completely on you and go into battle with You. Guide me, I pray, as I try to trust You more. Train me. Equip me. Make me a mighty warrior in prayer. Be glorified through me as I trust in You. In Jesus’ name, Amen
Remember while this blog shares some of my personal battles and experiences, the bulk of this blog is based from the two books I have been studying and practicing. The Wednesday night group beginning on 11/11 will be based on “Fervent” and “The Battle Plan for Prayer” and much of this blog is also extracted from these books. Sometimes word for word and sometimes paraphased, but still from the books. I want to give the credit to those books and the authors. I am simply sharing how they have helped me practice and grow in my daily prayer life. I hope it helps you do the same!